I'm writing here because I have nowhere else to record my thoughts. No Discord vent channels, no Telegram groups, and not private correspondence with friends. I want to preface this with the good news, because I believe it will be easier to understand that way.

For the last 15 months, I have been studying Electronics and Communications Technology at Bates Technical College to earn my associates degree and transition into a rewarding and fulfilling career solving problems and engaging with science and engineering in a more hands-on approach. It is a field that gained my interest five years ago, and the sees planted then blossomed into this great achievement of mine. That's right, I graduated! Finally. As my long-time watchers may be aware, I never graduated high school. Rather, I tested for my GED and passed. And I never graduated from my first college program, that being Powersports Technology, because during my last quarter I was fired from the job that served as my work study. I happened to be one-hundred-and-thirty miles away from my campus and lacked the funds to move back to attend in-person. So close, yet so far. I spend most of 2019 in limbo, trying to find a place to work as a powersports technician, but either the jobs were shit, or the places I wanted to work at weren't hiring. I returned to Tacoma and kept trying. Same deal. So, I decided that I must return to college. Now, 2019 was pivotal for me. In January, not only had I moved out on my own again, but I started my career, and soon lost it. I was introduced to Telegram by one of my watchers at the time, which allowed me to access the furry community in a way I'd never before. I met many people, for better and for worse.

During my journey, before and during my college program, friendships blossomed and withered. I felt love and happiness, I felt anxiety and anger. It was a brand new world. Consequently, after getting accustomed to Telegram, I stopped writing these journals as frequently. I had friends, now, who I could confide in and get more immediately responses from. My reliance on friends for this support manifested itself is many ways--some good and some awful. And that is why I am here today.

Have you heard of post-graduation depression? If you haven't, that's oaky. There isn't much dialogue about it. I suffer from MDD, so I'm more than use to this feeling, but after getting on meds in late July, my life started feeling better. I was doing well. The things that had haunted me in February way into the heat of Summer no longer got under my skin like they used to.
So, since graduating just last Thursday, I was shocked to have felt depressed, again. It was the same low feeling I get during my birthday. There's this amazing thing happening to me, and yet, everyone around me seems to pay no thought to it. And if they don't care, why should I? I should feel excited and proud! And yet all I want to do is cry. And cry I did.

I need to specify that the world is undergoing a pandemic. And for nine long months here in the United States, we have been in lockdown. I had the misfortune of both turning twenty-one and graduating from college this year. The pandemic may very well drag on into the next year, as well. Two monumental achievements in life and I was robbed of my ability to celebrate them as I'd always wanted to. I wanted to go to bars and clubs with my friends! Have a blast! I wanted a commencement ceremony--the first and only in my life--dressed in my royal blue cap and gown. And I got to do none of that. Hell, the only bar I've been to was a TGI Friday's at the DFW airport. I have always been reclusive, though not by choice. As a matter of fact, I love going out and spending time with people. (The trouble is, it doesn't seem like anyone enjoys spending time with me). So as you might imagine, the pandemic only worsened this. I spend three out of five quarters of college in my room. I spent most of this year in my room, in fact. I still managed to get together with friends here and there, but for the most part, these walls are my home, my classroom, and my mental prison. I'm sure you all can relate.

Though, some of you may have essential jobs, and so you got to continue you're weekly work routine, but this time behind a mask. And some of you entered this pandemic with your friends as roommates, or perhaps with a lover. I consider all of these things good luck. For the most part, assuming you managed to maintain that job or that romantic partner, or those friends, you made it. but for people like me? Well, an idle mind is the fault of idle hands. And my mind can be cruel to me. I've seen my friendships crumble to dust before my eyes, even before the pandemic. The difference now is that I am unable to make new friends. I can't go out into the world and actually meet people. Be in the moment with them, you know? It has been a heartbreaking and fleeting experience. Some friendships just faded because we were never really close to begin with. Others are more complicated affairs, and I don't have time to go into it in this journal.

Either way, I made it. I made it to the end of my college days. And there was no one left to celebrate it with me. No one who gave a fuck, anyways. No one who was willing to set some time aside to be with me even virtually. My college produced a pre-recorded online commencement ceremony for the class of 2020, since we'd never get to walk on stage together before your friends and family, and flip that tassel. I asked my closest friend to watch it with me. It was a special occasion, after all. And he declined. Spent the whole day working at home. Could even be there for me for the fifteen minutes it took to get through the video. So, I decided to stream it in my Discord server for furries with horse fursonas. One person joined. I paused, we chatted for a few, then I resumed the video. After a couple minutes, he told he that he's not watching my whole graduation and then left. I started crying. This was not how it was supposed to be. I remember my mother's graduation back in 2017. There were so many people there to support their loved ones taking this brave new step forwards. My sister and I were there for her, I even have a photo of me hugging my mother outside the football field where it was held. She looked so happy.

And there I was, sitting the the same chair I've been sitting in for a year, at the same desk, wearing the same clothes. Sobbing as I watch some lackluster supplement of a ceremony alone in my room.

Where once I had felt happiness and hope the last few months, I now felt depressed and sorrowful. Prior to this, I asked my friend Brandon if he'd like to visit to celebrate, and he declined--saying that he and his housemates have decided to quarantine until things die down again. Didn't stop us from meetup up earlier this year, but I suppose it's the smart move. I thought about reaching out to a former best friend of mine who I'd met in the spring of last year. He suddenly stopped talking to me in early August of this year after I had a depressive episode and had to cut our visit short. But I figured that there's no point in lingering in the past. I mean, after all, if he truly cared for me he would have stuck around. That set off a chain on thinking. Are any of the people I consider friends and close friends truly friends at all? They never reach out to me first, never ask me to hang out, or paly something. It's always me who has to initiate things. If I just stepped away from my keyboard, would I just disappear from their consciousness?

I pondered this last night. it kept me awake. It dug into my mind like a worm to an apple. Venting it didn't help, either. There was something there waiting to burst in all this depression. Rooted in a sense of feeling unwanted, unloved, undeserving of peoples time and attention. Worthless, spiteful, and eternally depressed. What made my friends of the past fall to the wayside or suddenly ghost? Lovers, too. Oh yes, a lover ghosting me is perhaps the most torturous example. I could pour my heart and soul, time and effort, craft and money into my close friends and lovers and get bullshit in return. I'm not catastrophizing on this one, I need only go into detailed examples as evidence. Do I just fall for shitty people or is there something seriously wrong with me? Something everyone else sees, but I don't?

Suddenly, all the friends I had left stopped looking like friends. All this time, all this love and pain, the miles travelled, and the futures imagined all felt as though it were for nothing. And whose fault is it? Not who, what. That little part of my brain that craves attachment. That craves love. That craves the company of others. It went into overdrive, fueled by fallacies and facades broadcast on social media and in messenger apps. Happy couples, friendship, good times--all of it unattainable by someone as inept as I am. I thought I'd learned to overcome the hurdle that autism placed between me and a healthy social life. I was wrong. That part of my mind was inflated past its usefulness and it began to rob me of contentedness--of my ability to just be okay by myself. And so I clang to anyone who would stick around, even if they weren't healthy for me.

I knew what I had to do. I had to unplug. No matter how painful it may be in the immediate future, I needed to learn to be okay with myself, alone. I needed to stop believing that everyone I met online could fill the role of a healthy, close friendship. I'm done whoring myself out on Grindr. I'm done letting Twitter sick my confidence and time away, I'm done letting people on Telegram warp my perception of reality, and I'm done letting Discord falsify a sense of order and community. I deleted it all. Desktop and phone. I had to. Forcing a cat into a cage to take her to the vet may be unpleasant for the cat, but it's for her own good that she gets the medicine she needs. As uncomfortable as this decision is already becoming, I must learn to not my imagination of what other's perceive of me drag me down any further. I deserve to feel happy. I deserve to find love. I deserve to have friends who care as much for my as I do for them. I deserve a life outside these walls. We all do. Maybe this act of isolation is in turn an act of self destruction. It's time to change, no matter what. Something had to.

Matt, Matthias, Austin, Dan, Brandon, Brenden, Joseph, Charity, Noah, Ryan, Jackie, Charles, Matthew, Garrett, Hunter, Ed and Azzy, Chris, Feron, Rio, Bryce--they are all gone now. Some disappeared long ago, some simply lingered nearby. I loved some of them so deeply, and their loss caused me so much pain. I will not let them hurt me any longer. I will not open my skull and chest to them and let them rob me anymore.
Because let's be honest, it's all in my head. Most of them never had malicious intent. It's my fault that I fell so hard for some of them despite the signs that our friendship wasn't as I imagined it was.

My old friend matt once said, as we were driving back from Furvana, that he felt he was about to step into a portal. Where everything in his life was going to change. He was talking about his professional engineer exam that he'd been preparing for. I understood it then, but I truly understand it now. I can't be this lovestruck, miserable boy anymore. I'm past college and I'm pretty sure I've landed this job I've interviewed for twice now. I'm about to step into a portal. I can already see my world changing. And I hope for my own sake that I'm ready.

When I'm working fulltime, perhaps I'll make actual friends and meet new people. If not, I'm sure I'll get the chance once we have overcome this pandemic. I hope to meet you all at a con one day, I appreciate your ongoing support. If you made it this far, let me know what you think of my thought process, here. Do you agree with my decision? my thought process? Do you disagree and think I'm making a mistake? Hah, there I go again trying to rely on external validation. In any case, I hope you have a wonderful December. Happy Holidays! I imagine I'll see y'all later after I've been working for a bit.